The Gateway To The Upper Peninsula
A history lesson:
Father Jacques Marquette, a French Jesuit missionary established Michigan’s earliest European settlements at Sault Ste. Marie and St.Ignace in 1668 and 1671. He supervised the St.Ignace mission which was a French mission established on Mackinac Island around 1671 and was moved the following year to the mainland on the northern shore of the Straits of Mackinac. The mission consisted of a nearby fort and a French village that grew up to become a center of the flourishing fur trade which develped around the Straits of Mackinac. The St.Ignace Mission was maintained until 1706 when it was suspended. In 1712 it was reopened and served the region around the Mackinac Straits until, in 1714, it was moved again, this time to the south shore of the Straits.
In 1673 the Marquette joined the explorer Louis Jolliet for the journey
which was to trace for the first time the broad stream of the Mississippi
from its upper reaches in Wisconsin to the mouth of the Arkansas. On his
return north from the voyage down the Mississippi, Marquette, worn by exhaustion
and illness, remained in the Illinois Country hoping to find a mission
there. In 1675, feeling that his dealth was near, he set out for the St.Ignace
Mission but died and was buried en route. Two years later, his remains
were carried to St.Ignace in fulfillment of his wish to be buried a that
mission. In 1877, what have been identified as Marquette’s remains were
discovered at St.Ignace and reburied on the site of the Mission chapel.